Wary About New Deregulation

September 21, 1997|The Morning Call

To the Editor:

I see by the massive advertising campaigns started by PP&L and PECO that we are entering the brave new world of a deregulated electricity industry. I can't wait to see what happens when I plug in my toaster 10 years from now, because other deregulated industries have brought me:

*Long-distance phone service that has people bugging me every night at dinner to switch to their service and "discount" rates that are not, and pay phones that work about one-third of the time, emergency or not.

*Airline deregulation, where depending on how close to flight time one buys a ticket, people pay from $300 to $1,700 for passage on the same flight.

*A trucking industry that has numbers of total incompetents driving larger and longer trucks in larger and larger numbers, where the free-fall in rates has caused huge quality declines in drivers and maintenance.

*And, my personal favorite, the health care industry, where a person with a high school diploma on a computer terminal at the end of an 800 number has the power to tell a physician the exact course of the treatment that you will get, if any.